STRAIN (And Why It’s A Good Idea to Double-Check Your Research)

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There’s a little Doom WAD called STRAIN. It’s pretty great. If you’re like me, you might even call it The Greatest.

I’ve been pondering what I want to say about STRAIN for a long time. There’s a lot to be said. So I’ve been pondering a whole lot but not writing much of anything. Not much of substance, at any rate, and the deadline I’d set for myself was creeping closer and closer:

September 14 — you’re going to post that essay on STRAIN before then, you bum, and you can’t weasel your way out of it! Don’t think I can’t see right through you.

September 14 was perfect. It would work out to be the 10th in my series of WAD reviews. More importantly, it was the STRAIN‘s 16th birthday — the sweet sixteen. That is, going by the date it was uploaded to the idgames Archive. The best I could do, really; it’s not like there was a release date in the readme, and I certainly wasn’t around at the time of release (nor would I remember the exact day if I had been). I guess some details are just lost to the sands of–

Oh, you mean the actual release date is on the… on the website, huh? I… didn’t think to check there.

…and I missed it by two months?

W-well, joke’s on you, STRAIN! I’m not happy with what I’ve written so far anyway! Looks like another year of procrastinating! Yay! Another year to let these thoughts sit and marinate and maybe turn into something befitting my beloved STRAIN. Maybe by July 3rd, 2014, I’ll come up with some series of several thousand words that does it justice. Check back then; I’m sure it’ll be super rad.

In the more immediate future, I’ll still use this September pseudoversary as an excuse to play through it yet another time.

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Whhheeeeeeeeeeee!!

I’m sorry, guys. I’m so bad at this job.

(If you want to join me over at Moonbase Daro, though, grab yourself a copy of STRAIN and fire up your sourceport of choice! We can still throw the birthday party even if we got the date wrong!)

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